Friday, October 24, 2008

On Twitter, we seem to have this crazy preoccupation with keeping score. Maybe you remember Twitterholic, which tracks the top 100 Twitterers ranked by numbers of followers. By the way, with 105,689 Barack Obama is number one. and John McCain (3977 followers) is not on the list at all. Recently, two new entrants joined the ranking systems, Twitter Grader and Twinfluence. Twitter Grader surveys over 100,000 Twitterers to provide you with a grade based on the number of followers you have, the power of this network of followers, the pace of your updates, the completeness of your profile and “a few other factors.” Twinfluence looks at factors like Reach, Velocity, Social Capital & Centralization. The new tools have become quite popular with people focused on their scores and ways in which they can improve. Since yesterday, there have been over 800 tweets focused on Twitter Grader alone!! Mashable even has a post on How to Improve Your Scores!

To me this focus on grades, rankings and competition, goes against the whole concept/ value of Twitter. Twitter is all about the value of conversation with your community. We focus too much on the score and where we fit in the pecking order. Personally, I don't care. I love the community and just want to engage in conversations and learn new things from all of the interesting people in the Twitterverse.

This is not about grade envy either, because as you can see from below, my "grades" are well regarded. How do you feel about the new competition?

About

Many of us have found Twitter to be much more than a messaging platform, but a real community where friends, business partners, and acquaintances get together for conversation. This blog seeks to answer questions, point out tips, identify cool tools and talk about Twitter. Hopefully it will be helpful to newcomers and experts alike. It is patterned after the great Facebook related blogs Inside Facebook, All Facebook and FaceReviews.

There is a lot of great discussion going on about Twitter on many blogs. I won't duplicate those ideas, but hopefully this central place will make them easier to find.

You can learn more about me, Warren Sukernek, here. And of course, you can email me, ws AT Twittermaven DOT com or feel free to follow me @warrenss at our favorite place.